A new me

I sat at my desk with a mug of steaming chamomile tea, my laptop open. I had an important deadline tomorrow and wanted to double check that everything was ready. I was rereading my report, looking for ways to clarify concepts and add more rationale to my recommendations when a shriek pierced the silence.

 “Mom!” Tristan was yelling for me, wailing.

I ran to his room and saw him sitting on his bed, head in his hands, rocking back and forth. At fifteen he was slim and, wearing only his pajama bottoms, he still looked like a boy.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, panicked.

“I need money. I need you. To give me money. And I need it now.” His voice was harsh, anxious, broken. He stopped rocking and looked at me. His eyes were red-rimmed and sunken. He looked desperate.

Jesus Christ. I felt like my blood had stopped flowing, freezing me in that moment. This was about drugs, I knew. His increasing need for cocaine. I took a deep breath. “Tristan—”

“Mom, I need some fucking money, OK?” He was rocking again. “What part of that don’t you understand?” He took his hands and hit his head with them, again and again, with every word he spoke. “I,” hit, “need,” hit, “some,” hit, “fucking,” hit harder, “money!” hit harder still. He yelled this last part, bashing at his head.

I took a step forward to stop him, to catch his hands, to hold them tightly to me, to wrap him in love and safety, but I stopped myself. This wasn’t like the time he fell, as a toddler, and knocked out his front tooth, or got stung by a bee as a preschooler. I couldn’t make this better with a warm hug and basic first aid. My boy was going crazy in front of me—was already crazy.

The whole world dropped away until nothing existed except that room, and Tristan, and me. No past. No future. Just now.

“Tristan, stop it,” I spoke firmly, but calmly. “You need to stop hitting yourself so we can talk.”

He stopped, clenched and unclenched his fists, and looked up at me again, still rocking. His eyes were teary now.

“OK,” I said. “Good.” I took a deep breath, trying to spread calmness, buying myself a moment to think. “You want money for cocaine, right? But that’s what got you here. It’s what you need to get away from. More coke won’t help you.”

“You don’t understand, Mom. You don’t get it.” He took a few laboured breaths, and I could see he was trying to form his thoughts. “Look. It’s not having any that makes me crazy. If I get coke, I won’t need to use it, I swear, because I know it’ll be there. Then I won’t need it. If I have it, I don’t need it. If I don’t have it, I need it but I don’t need to use it, I promise, Mom.”

He looked frantic, almost hopeful, searching my face to see if he’d made a clear argument. To see if I finally understood. I didn’t. I was scared. It terrified me to see how Tristan’s mind worked.

He must have realized his logic was lacking because he tried a different tack. “Mom, if I don’t get something now I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I don’t wanna live like this,” his voice broke, with a sob. “I can’t live like this. I’m going to fucking kill myself.”

Even as those words stripped me raw, I didn’t think Tristan was suicidal. I’d heard him threaten to kill himself dozens of times—always as a tactic for sympathy or… something. Something I could never quite fathom.

Instead of fear, my heart welled with love and hurt for my poor, sick boy. This was the babe I held in my arms and nursed at my breast. The toddler who I taught to count by finding snails in our backyard—one and then two and then three. The boy with a heart so big he would help anyone who was hurting, spending his last dollar to buy his sister a stuffed animal to cheer her up, or volunteering to vacuum the living room when he saw that I was stressed.

I had no idea how to help him now. Paying for his drugs, as he was asking me to, wouldn’t help him in the long run, I knew. But would it help in the short term? I hadn’t been able to get him into a rehab centre, because he refused to go. He wouldn’t see a doctor, or talk to a therapist. But I needed to save him. So I’d planned to take him to China to fulfill his dream of studying kung fu with Shaolin Monks, where I hoped the intense training and fresh air would help him start over without relying on mind-altering substances. Would getting him drugs now, help him to get on that plane in a few weeks and out of the mess his life had become here?

I stared at Tristan for a long moment. Behind him, my own reflection stared back at me from his window, waiting to see what I’d do. Judging. I knew I couldn’t make her happy, no matter what I did. There was no right answer, only pain. Pain now, or pain later.

I turned away from myself.

“How much do you need?” I asked.

“Just twenty bucks is fine,” he said, then paused. “Forty would be better.” He looked at me, and then said, “But I owe the guy some money and he won’t sell to me until I pay him back first.”

“How much do you owe him?” I asked.

“Eighty,” he said. “Sorry, Mom.” He said it like he meant it, his guilt palpable. I suspected he was playing me, but also thought it may be true, on some level.

I nodded my head. “If I do this for you, and I drive you, will you stay home tonight?” I didn’t want him out all night like this. Not for his sake, I admitted to myself. He’d be fine once he got high. But I’d be up all night worrying and crying. I needed him home, for my peace of mind. If I was going to do this for him, I deserved something in return. “And will you try to keep your shit together for the next few weeks? Please?” I added, for whatever it was worth.

“I will, Mom, I promise. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

I drove Tristan to a high-school parking lot a few minutes from our house. It was around 9:00 by that time, pitch black, but thankfully not raining. Tristan was quiet on the ride, twitchy and anxious. I parked, he told me he’d be back in a few minutes, and off he went through a path in the woods with the $120 I’d taken out of a drive-through ATM.

It worried me to lose sight of him. I didn’t know who he was meeting, or where. And Tristan would just turn off his phone if he didn’t want to hear from me. I didn’t know how long I should wait.

Ten minutes passed.

I wondered if Tristan felt remorseful. If he knew what he was putting me through and felt sorry at all. He said it often enough, but did he mean it? I felt better when I imagined he did.

Another ten minutes passed.

I figured I should probably go home. Twenty minutes was definitely longer than the “few” he promised to be gone for. I felt like such a stooge and was suddenly furious with myself for being duped. I sat in my car with the windows steaming up, tears of shame and anger streaking down my face, basking in my failure as a parent, deriding myself with masochistic wrath. I’m driving my kid to drug deals now? Paying for them? How can I even try to justify that? I couldn’t, I admitted.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered aloud to the mom I had wanted to be and so clearly wasn’t.

I sat in the chilly car, warm tears on my cold cheeks, and waited a bit longer.

Twenty-five minutes after he walked through the path in the trees, Tristan returned down the path to the parking lot. He got in the car, looking like his old self. He wasn’t anxious. He wasn’t twitchy. His colour was better. Not good, but better than it was an hour ago.

“Thanks, again, Mom. I’m sorry to put you through this shit. I won’t do it again, I promise.” He looked at me and seemed normal. Not that I knew what normal was anymore. Tristan was more normal on drugs, than off.

I nodded my head at Tristan, suddenly completely exhausted. I just wanted to crawl into bed. “OK. Let’s go home,” I said.

As I started the car, Tristan reached over and gave me a shoulder rub. His physical touch comforted me, as it always had. He was here right now. He was safe. I was okay.